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Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess. Different setup and castling rules. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

H.G.Muller wrote on Thu, May 1, 2008 11:53 AM UTC:

I still can't see the point you are tring to make. If piece values cannot
be used to predict outcomes of games, they would be useless in the first
place. Why would you want to be an exchange or a piece ahead, if it might
as frequently mean you are losing as that you are winning? Fact is that I
OBSERVE that the piece values I have given below do statistically predict
the outcome of games with good precision.

If, according to you, that should not be the case, than apparently you are
wrong. If, according to you, that is not what 'good' piece values should
do, than that satisfactorily explains why you would consider your set of
piece values, which would cause whatever entity that uses them to play by
to lose consistently, in your eyes can still be 'good', and further
discussion could add nothing to that.

What you say about opponent modelling doesn't have anything to do with
piece values. Precisely knowing the limitations of your opponent allows
you to play a theoretically losing strategy (e.g. doing bad trades) in
order to set a trap. In general, this is a losing strategy, as in practice
one cannot be sufficiently sure about where the opponent's horizon will
be. So it will backfire more often than not.

And the datasets that are analyzed by me or Kaufman are not dominated by
players engaging in such opponent modelling. I can be certain of that for
my own data, as I wrote the engine(s) generating it myself. So I know they
only attempt theoretically optimal play that would work against any
opponent.